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The Packard Resurrection Project: The 80-20 rule

1 of 5Door handles are back on the car after a several year absence. Trim alignment will be perfected before the car is finished.

Photo by Graham Kozak

2 of 5Stainless trim brings the "Spear of Destiny" hood ornament motif to the side of the car.

Photo by Graham Kozak

3 of 5Polished stainless steel trim prior to installation. That's enough to make a lot of cutlery.

Photo by Graham Kozak

4 of 5After several weeks of false starts, the dash receives several coats of high-gloss clear paint.

Photo by Graham Kozak

5 of 5The subtle metallic flake of the dashboard is accentuated by the high-gloss clearcoat.

Photo by Graham Kozak

The Pareto principle, better known as the 80-20 rule, seems to be as applicable to auto restoration as it is to sales revenue or income distribution.

In the case of my 1951 Packard project, at least, I can think of a handful of days—say 20 or so out of the past three months—that stick out as tremendously productive. Those 20 days account for approximately 80 percent of the progress I've made so far. The rest have been marked by advances that were incremental at best.

Or maybe it only feels that way. After all, attaching fenders and installing an engine are big-ticket operations that yield very visible results. Spending half a week polishing stainless steel trim doesn't provide the same sort of immediate satisfaction. It feels like toil, not progress.

Fun fact: if you lay the trim pieces from a 1951 Packard sedan end to end, you'll end up with a length of stainless steel longer than total distance my car has driven since 2009.

But even work done on cosmetic bits and pieces, like all that stainless-steel trim, is critically important to the overall reassembly process.

The door handles cannot be installed until the stainless trim that sits underneath them is put in place, for example. When I put that trim and those door handles in place for the first time in years–finally restoring the doors to a useable state—I was glad I spent the time polishing the steel.

Simple things, such as re-installing the door handles or the now-functional trunk—complete with new weatherstripping—have gone a long way towards helping me regain the momentum I lost after failing to meet my Woodward Dream Cruise deadline.

I'm not working with the fevered, down-to-the-wire energy I had back in early August, but the Packard project is moving forward. Stay tuned for more updates (including a video of the long-awaited start-up) soon.

Graham Kozak
- Graham Kozak drove a 1951 Packard 200 sedan in high school because he wanted something that would be easy to find in a parking lot. He thinks all the things they're doing with fuel injection and seatbelts these days are pretty nifty too.
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